Dinner Out

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Window on the back of Spanish Village, Balboa Park, 2009.

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Himself: Just too perky for words. Herself: A bit drained from the poem. Reading: Too Many Magicians. I am not making much time for reading these days. Balance: Eating out and splitting the meal. Felipe’s has superior foods at half the price of the new wave Italian restaurants that surround it.

• New thinking. We ate out at Felipe’s in Little Italy, but we ate out differently.
  
  Yes, there really is a Little Italy here in our town. A friend of Duck’s turned us on to this mom and pop establishment many years ago, and we love it. Flat out love it. Felipe’s was there when little Italy was the shopping hub of the Italian community, it was there when only aficionado’s went downtown for anything, and it is still there now that the Italian area of downtown has been gentrified. All fixed up. Prettified….and isn’t Lady Bird happy now.
  
  There was a long line crowded out onto the sidewalk when we arrived. By the time we parked in their parking lot…which originally must have been the space for two homes, the line had been absorbed. We passed through the grocery store and it’s myriads of smells to be seated in the roofed over patio area.
  
  It was good Friday. We found ourselves with the large and voluble families who came to eat straight from mass at the neighborhood parish. Only one small male child screamed for a good ten minutes. We didn’t mind. We split a small antipasto salad. We split a ravioli and lasagna plate….with a little added sausage. We didn’t have to eat all that food….each. And we still left the restaurant feeling stuffed. Smiling doubly with our first attempt at splitting dinner.
  
  We took short walk around a block or two afterwards, I dashing in to a new competitive grocery store, checking out the prices on the new, stylish restaurants, dodging the families walking their too many dogs on the crowded sidewalks. The best bakery in town still lives there, Solunto’s. The Reader, a conservative alternative rag has its office in Little Italy. My favorite art store continues still clinging to life catty corner from Felipe’s. There’s a shoe store, galleries, and apartments front right on this busy street. A 7/11 has moved in a block up, and a block toward the bay one can find hotels of all stripes.
  
  From almost moribund after the freeway cut the community in half, it’s rebounded into a delightful little corner just off downtown. It’s life and energy gave us a lovely hour or so right in the heart of our city, and sent us home with a smile.